


we're meant for the grave, you and I

by eden22



Category: Captain America (Movies)
Genre: Character Study, M/M, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-11
Updated: 2021-03-11
Packaged: 2021-03-18 06:40:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,831
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29978889
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eden22/pseuds/eden22
Summary: Steve was never meant to live this long.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers
Comments: 1
Kudos: 32





	we're meant for the grave, you and I

**Author's Note:**

> Not beta'd.

“What makes you happy?” Sam had asked him once. Three years later, Steve still didn’t have an answer. 

The thing is–

The thing is–

Steve doesn’t know what to do with himself.

He’s a man out of time, lost and uprooted from everything and everyone he knew, and he keeps waiting for the 21st century to get easier, to make more  _ sense _ to him but he’s been off the ice for over four years now and he still has no idea how to exist in this new world he so unexpectedly found himself in. Being a SHIELD agent used to give him purpose, but that hadn’t ended so well. Being an Avenger felt better, felt more like  _ him _ than being a soldier or a spy ever had. He’d been made for and from back alley brawls after all; an instinct, a drive that far preceded the injection of the serum into his veins. It felt like a return to who he had been, back then. There to fight for the little guy, for no other reason than it was the right thing to do, no one on his side except God and Bucky. 

But that hadn’t lasted either. 

The thing is–

The thing is–

Steve wasn’t meant to live this long. Not just the whole into the ice thing, the thing where he was frozen in the arctic while the world just spun on without him—

_ “Could you have gotten out?” Natasha had asked him once. “Was there a way to, to save yourself?” _

_ Steve hadn’t answered, but as Natasha had pointed out to him once, not answering was sometimes an answer in itself. The look Natasha gave him, she understood exactly what he was saying by not saying anything at all. She never told anyone though, and he never stopped being grateful for that. _

—but before that. When he’d been just a kid from Brooklyn. Small and sick, he’d had the last rites read over his body five times before his twentieth birthday and he figured there wasn’t a single person in the neighborhood who wasn’t utterly shocked that Widow Rogers’ boy lived to be an adult. It didn’t help that he’d never met a fight he was willing to back down from. He’d always fought like a demon, pissed off at God and the world and his body, and he figured if the pneumonia didn’t get him, some asshole with a knife would. Sooner, rather than later. At least it would stop how much he’d  _ hurt _ all the time, back then. Physical pain, his constant, unending companion.

Every year, he assumed his birthday would be his last. That this would finally be the year that something would crawl inside his body that he wouldn’t be able to shake back out, that would eat him from the inside out until finally he was the one who left his body instead. And then he’d be gone. There wouldn’t even be anyone who’d mourn him other than Bucky. He pictured it sometimes. Bucky, pale with red rimmed eyes, watching as they lowered Steve’s coffin into the ground. The looks Buck had given him when he thought Steve wasn’t looking, he knew that he’d thought of the same thing. Pictured it like Steve had. Knew, just as well as Steve did, that it wasn’t a matter of if Bucky’d bury him, but when. 

He didn’t particularly bother with dreams or aspirations. Not just because they were dirt poor and the only dream you could afford to have was of a full belly and maybe a new coat for the winter. He loved to draw sure, but that didn’t make much money, and it wasn’t worth investing in classes or school for someone who was just a walking corpse. A body that didn’t yet realize it was dead, was bound for the grave with an unerring certainty. He’d fight, to the end, whether it was a fist in someone else’s face or wheezing his way through an asthma attack that threatened to steal the breath from his lungs for keeps, this time. But he wouldn’t be able to fight his way  _ out _ of the end, whatever form it took, whenever it decided to take him. 

The thing is–

The thing is–

It’s hard to keep living when you’ve already accepted your death. When you’d come to terms with it, were ready to greet it as an old friend. Scared, sure. Always so fuckin’ terrified, lying in his bed and desperately trying to breathe, shaking and sweating with fever. Seeing the fear on Bucky’s face too, as he pressed a cool washcloth to Steve’s forehead and wondered to himself if he should call the priest. Not that he ever said as much to Steve, but Steve knew. He knew. 

It felt like a mistake. A fuckup. Science vs God and science had prevailed but the cost to Steve’s soul… he wasn’t sure he’d ever fully understand, not until he was standing waiting for his final judgement, to be found wanting and empty inside. God had never meant him to make it this far. It had upset the balance of the world, Steve living this long. Would live for years and years longer still, the unchanging skin of his face promising him that instead of him dying, he’d get to watch everyone he loved die. Maybe not Bucky, with his handful of grey hairs and no wrinkles to show for the strange, intermittent years that he’d lived without Steve. He was years older than Steve now, when it had used to be months. 

_ “I didn’t age while I was frozen,” he’d said to Steve, looking down at his hands, the skin on the back of his flesh hand untouched by age. “I don’t know how long I was awake for, don’t even remember how many times they woke me up. I have no idea how many years I’ve lived since I fell off that train.” _

Steve wonders sometimes if Bucky feels the same way about himself. Steve has no doubt that there were plenty of times when Hydra had had him, where he thought about taking the only escape available to him. Plenty of time on a table or in the chair or in a cell to think about death as an out, as the kind of freedom he hadn’t touched in decades. Something to long after, something to dream about. With everything that Hydra did to him there was also the constant, hovering possibility that he would outlive his usefulness and then he too would become just another weapon to decommission and leave behind on the path of history. Too much electricity through the chair: accident. Fault in the cryo unit: accident. An experiment, a test, gone too far: accident. Bullet into his skull at the end of a failed mission: an execution. All paths leading to peace.

He wonders if Bucky also feels like he’s undead, eating at the happiness of everyone around him; a mindless, starving monster. 

The thing is–

The thing is–

Steve isn’t sure he  _ knows _ how to live. 

It was there, in everything that he was doing before Bucky came back to him. In his bland DC apartment, more IKEA than person. In his running from New York, unable to face the city that had birthed him, had raised him. Had grown into something new and utterly unrecognizable in his absence. The city that he’d saved, the city that had raised its walls and closed its shutters and blocked him out completely. Throwing himself into missions because he didn’t know what else to do, because the taste of adrenaline and the sight of death looming black over his shoulder was the only familiar thing he had left. 

_ “What makes you happy?” _

_ “Could you have gotten out?” _

He didn’t have answers, not ones that were good enough. Not for Sam, not for Natasha. He found the words for the SHIELD therapist who cleared him for combat, but though they came from his mouth he didn’t understand them. They were a lie, a facade just as much as the name Captain America. Just as familiar, as sharp and bitter and sweet. He let the facade consume him, just a little or maybe a lot, because he didn’t know what else to do or who else to be. He didn’t have to try and learn how to live if he was being Him and so he put on the mask and picked up the shield and pretended to be someone else. Someone who understood life, who knew how to live. Who had purpose and a reason for being. 

He was a specter in a flesh and blood body. 

When he’d watched the Night of the Living Dead—crossing off another item in a list of things meant to anchor him in a century he didn’t belong in, as if familiarizing himself with pop culture would somehow make it okay for him to be there—he’d thrown up. Happy to be alone as he sprinted to the bathroom. He was pretty sure he’d cried too, before getting up and forcing himself to sit through two more zombie movies, eyes fixed on the shambling corpses, the way they existed only by tearing the life from the living. Not meant to be there, not meant to be upright and walking, clawing their way out of their graves. The dead, risen and unnatural. Unholy and damning everything they came into contact with. 

He hadn’t been to church since the resurrection. Wasn’t sure he could bear to sit there and look up at the face of the only man who was ever meant to come back from the dead. 

He’s looking out the window when Bucky finds him, the lights of New York spread out in front of them. Unfamiliar and familiar both in a way that makes him ache every time he looks at it. Bucky comes up behind him, wraps his arms around him and perches his chin on Steve’s shoulder. He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t ask, and Steve’s grateful for it because he has no idea what he’d say if he did. Bucky’s warm and solid pressed against him though, and Steve can’t help but lean back into the embrace. A century later, through ice and fire and the worst things that can happen to a person—Bucky still smells the same. 

Steve smiles. 

Maybe he wasn’t meant to be alive still, maybe he wasn’t meant to live this long. Maybe it was in defiance of God and there would be a cost to be paid worse than anything imaginable when the reaper finally caught up with him, him and his stolen life, his stolen years. Maybe it was worth it though, just for this. To be with Bucky, here, after everything. Robbing fate one final time, tricking God into giving him back the one person who could convince him to keep living. 

Steve might not know how to live, but God was he trying. 

**Author's Note:**

> not me trying to work through my weird feelings about turning 30 and still being alive by writing a steve rogers character study at 1am


End file.
